True story.
Between 1980 and 1994 I worked as a painter/sandblaster on the Tay Railway Bridge that links Dundee to Edinburgh.
One of my colleagues, Rocky, had previously been a Chef in the Royal Air Force. One fine morning as we were walking out to the work area there was a goose wandering around the track with an injury due to being struck by a train.
The Rock scooped it up and carried it along to the bothy where we had our breaks, killed the critter and removed the best edible parts, and the rest was dumped into the Tay Estuary to be eaten by the other wildlife.
He asked us if we would like goose curry for lunch next day and we all agreed and chipped in a quid each. The next day Rocky stayed in the bothy and cooked a lunch of Goose curry, chapatis and basmati rice. It was delicious, and even after dining in some very good Indian and Pakistani curry houses over the years, it still sticks out as the best curry I ever had.
Places of note where I have eaten curry are Tayyab’s in Whitechapel, London and The Angar, The Viceroy Hotel on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi.
None come close to Rocky’s goose curry.
I have made goose on several occasions. It is a big bird the produces a huge amount of fat when roasted. Literally the steel drip pan was in danger of overflowing. The amount of meat on such a large bird was disappointing. It was compariable to a roasting chicken. Not much for an animal the size of a small turkey.
Here in the Netherlands they are considered a bit of a plague and the restrictions on hunting them are quite relaxed compared to other species. Our local NL hunters have no problem bagging multipal geese each in a single morning. There problem is, what to do with them. They may be able to sell a couple to a poltry butcher but what you get hardly covers the cost of fuel. You can give a few away to friends neighbors and family but the task of gutting, plucking and preparing a fresh goose is messy and gets old quickly. Freezing them for later? The take up a lot of room that may be otherwise put to better use.
I think they are more trouble than they are worth.
Back when I was in high school, we had this “farm” outside town and factory inside town.
The “farm” was a huge barn (only) with thousands of baby geese. This same company dealt with chickens and eggs.
Every year, we had what they called “goose season”. They would bring the geese in town, dispatch them, defeather them and send them downstairs to cut off the bad/bruised parts, cut off the oil glands, remove the innerds and then package them after a shower.
Goose season usually lasted for a month or a little more. They made amazing money off the downy feathers and goose meat. They usually dispatched and packaged 25,000 birds. They got sent all over the US and overseas.
So, theres many more people who eat geese than you think.
PS: I live in the upper plains, US and theres many many hunters and we hunt goose spring and fall. We eat those also. Canadian geese are good sized and can be subbed for a turkey on Thanksgiving and snows n blues/white fronted, etc can be used for a meal whenever.
